Digital Retail News

Sitemorse: Poor performance from DIY retailer websites in Q3

DIY retailers' websites generally performed poorly in the table of the best performing retail websites in Q3, according to the latest quarterly testing undertaken by digital specialist Sitemorse on the websites of the UK's top 500 retailers.

Fired Earth is the top performing website in the DIY category and it only managed to score 5.58 out of 10, which is a comparatively low score when compared with some of the other categories tested. It is also some way ahead of the second best placed DIY retailer Screwfix with its score of 4.28. This was helped by its move up 120 places in the overall ranked table, which made it the biggest climber in the DIY category by a decent margin, with Toolbank the next best on the back of its move up 82 places.

Screwfix sister company B&Q did not fare so well and is positioned in 284th spot in the overall table with a score of only 2.60, but this still places it above other big names - Wickes that is in 346th spot, Homebase in 364th spot, and Halfords in 391st spot.

The testing of the 500 sites is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated software that, page-by-page reads the first 125 pages of each retailer’s sites to generate a ranked table based on checks to Quality, User Experience, Accessibility, Performance and SEO capability of each of the websites.

Apart from Fired Earth and Screwfix all the other retailers tested within the DIY category – a total of 16 - scored less than four out of 10, which is very disappointing. The majority of the 16 declined in the table in Q3 compared with last quarter – with nine slipping down the rankings. The biggest losers were Walsh, which slipped 138 places into 278th spot and Budget DIY that moved down 98 places to 116th spot.

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